Waiver Mess Continues

The waiver wire is heating up here on Wednesday, as it seems the Selection Sheet may have some swaps and moves before the season even starts. Mildly annoying, especially when you're talking about a top four defenseman and a player that could fit on the Sheet, if it was another team.

It turns out that Mathieu Schneider has cleared waivers and no one wanted to pick his full salary up. That doesn't come as a huge surprise, since he is an aging player at a very high salary cap hit.  Now, the Ducks may put him on re-entry waivers, where teams can then claim him for half the salary cap hit, while Anaheim keeps the other half on their books.

With Schneider on the books right now for Anaheim, the Ducks currently have 19 players on their returning roster of veterans at a salary cap hit of $55.5 million, which isn't terrible.  A move of Schneider on re-entry waivers will save them about $2.8 million, bringing their totals down to $52.7 million.  I should point out that the 19 players does not include young players like Bobby Ryan, Ryan Carter, Joakim Lindstrom or Brian Sutherby, which would definitely bump up the salary cap hit.  So, fitting a guy like Teemu Selanne into the mess we call Anaheim is still a bit of a stretch, unless Selanne is taking a massive pay cut.

Joining Schneider on the waiver wire is Flames forward, Marcus Nilson.  Nilson, 30, is scheduled to make $1 million this season with Calgary, but doesn't seem to have that sort of value to the coaching staff.  Nilson was already waived once this summer, but didn't attract much attention then.  Nilson isn't necessarily a pool-type player, but he could prove to be a good depth player for anyone's team.